Traditionally, printing is done behind a firewall using either network connected or locally connected devices, where document submission, conversion and printing happen in the same environment. With the rapid emergence of cloud-based printing options, some or all of the activities are moving to a remote network of computers and servers, commonly referred to as “the cloud.” For example, the cloud can perform document conversion, instead of having the device that submitted the print job perform the conversion. This can free resources, such as processing power, on the submitting device. Also, users of mobile devices (or other users that want to print to the cloud) would like to do so by connecting to a printer without installing a driver (e.g. by emailing a file, web submission of a file to a print device connected to the cloud).
Typically, mobile print providers expose a variety of options to access personal and commercial printing devices, as well as document submission methods. While doing so, mobile print providers may rely on application programming interfaces (APIs) that rely on proprietary and/or custom interfaces. Also, each provider's cloud database may contain the complete list of devices and the respective capabilities of the devices. As a result, a given API is limited and locked to a specific print provider.